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This high technology makes men want to do things themselves, as they best see fit. Men create a new concept of service and working public property; he sees total democracy as something that can reallybe achieved. Men develop the awareness that they can become Kings who have the public services and properties at their disposal. They develop the wish to become Kings. In the future of politics it doesn’t matter who the ruler is: all that matters is HOW he does it. The idea of right and left wing is destined to disappear. (Prof. Derrick De Kerckhove Univ Toronto, Naples, Usa congress)
The origins of man’s new power
The internet has a global memory which can be accessed by individuals. Search engines are hyper-effective and can offer ubiquity, instantaneousness, and enormous acceleration: this is an added value that turns the individual into a uber-powerful user, a user which will become more and more demanding with time.
Castell’s Web-State or Levy’s Transparent State will offer free public space; political deliberations will only takes place in digital agoras; digital voting will be possible; it will have network-based parliaments sharing intellectual resources and information.
The administrational authorities will work as virtual open communities.
A new model of democracy is needed
The new public space should apply the principles of Plato’s Republic, of Florence and of Venice to the networks. (Prof. Derrick De Kerckhove Univ Toronto, Naples, Usa Congress)
Justice isn’t a question of institutional or juridical engineering, but it is a moral and cultural issue linked to communication and to the distrubution of knowledge. (From Plato’s Republic, book IV)
In order to eliminate the tyrant, we must deliberate that the authority of distributing duties and honors must be shared by the population, so that the citizens shouldn’t seek for anything and be a leader. (From Savonarola’s treatise on Government, chapter 3)
The idea of an electronic government is based on the fact that it can become a “public service”in order to turn politics into mere administration. This has a potential to elaborate, deliberate,control. deliberare, far eseguire, controllare. (Prof. Derrick De Kerckhove Univ Toronto, Naples, Usa Congress)
Continuous democracy or the privatisation of politics?
Free softwares and opensource materials are the biggest example of “continuous democracy”.
Continuous democracy will take the place now held by “discontinuous democracy”, which has its roots in the fiduciary mandate based on the representative system.
Representativeness gives independence to the mandate; after voting, citizens become an abstract entity. This is all very dangerous, because it makes democracy, politics and the Government itself available to fewer and fewer people, making way for the privatization of politics.
The cyberspace requires a new way of doing politics
The cyberspace, or digital universe, has 3 important features: inclusivity, transparency (because it increases the information and bypasses everything), universality (because it goes beyond all linguistic and istitutional barriers).
The cyberspace will make the way for new and unimaginable forms of politics, in addition to new cities and digital regions. An electronic government will be needed.
The new Agorà is born. (Prof. Pierre Levy Univer Ottawa)
Cyberdemocracy will elect the idea
Continuous democracy is based upon the individual, not the masses.
We will go from the election of people to the election of ideas, separating them from the elected, putting an end to the negative selection in accessing politics.
Continuous democracy is equity, the opposite of priviledge.